Learning About Compassion

During our last class, each student chose an animal to focus on for the course of our nine weeks together.  Last week I briefly introduced them to the idea of Native American Spirit Animals.  Some Native Americans believe that animals can help us through difficult times in our lives, and act as teachers in many ways.  Each student chose an animal he or she really likes to learn more about for this session.

Before the students entered the classroom I had a picture of the animal he or she chose with his or her name on the picture.  Each animal picture was placed on a yoga mat.  I asked the students to sit on the mat with the picture of the animal he or she chose.  Then they spent time with the picture looking at every detail using the powers of observation.  During this session it is each child's responsibility to take good care of the animal picture that is theirs, as if it were a pet.

During our mindfulness activity, the children imagined what it would feel like to become the animal they chose.  I asked many questions as they were following their breath:

Do you have fur, feathers, or scales?        

How do you get from one place to another? 

Do you fly, run, walk, swim, crawl?

What do your feet feel like?  Do you have flippers, hooves, claws, paws?

It was wonderful hearing the students share their thoughts and feelings about using their imaginations to become their chosen animal!

After that we had a conversation about compassion.  When I asked, no one was able to tell me what the word compassion meant, but they were all very curious.  I explained compassion by having each child imagine that their best friend fell off the monkey bars on the playground and got hurt.  The friend was crying and had scraped both knees badly.  "How would you feel toward that friend?" I asked.  Everyone agreed they would feel sad and want to help their friend.  "That is the feeling of compassion," I said.  Compassion combines caring for another living thing and not wanting harm to come to that thing.  

Then the students got to move all around the room pretending to be the animal they had chosen!  That is how we began our movement practice.  We also found many other yoga poses.  At the end of our movement work I let the students self-practice their favorite poses!  

During the art part of our class, the students painted a drawing!  They used a thin paintbrush and black paint to draw the image of the animal they will be working with.  Many of the students were very proud of their animal drawing when they were finished.